Joseph Fouche

Joseph Fouche (21 May 1759-25 December 1820) was Minister of Police of the French Consulate and the First French Empire from 1799 to 1810 and briefly in 1815. Fouche led the secret police of the French Directory and the Napoleonic empire, crushing the Jacobin threat in 1799 and becoming an adviser to Napoleon during the 1800s.

Biography
Joseph Fouche was born in Le Pellerin, France on 21 May 1759, and he worked as a tutor before the French Revolution, befriending Maximilien Robespierre during his educational career. During the revolution, he renounced his Catholic faith and became a member of the Jacobin Club, and he was elected to the National Convention in September 1792. From 1792 to 1793, he was a member of the monarchist Girondins, only to defect to The Mountain during the Reign of Terror and then to the Thermidorians during the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794. He supported the dechristianization of the French First Republic during the 1790s, and he continued to hold far-left views even after the reaction. Fouche helped in thwarting Francois-Noel Babeuf's conspiracy against the French Directory in 1797, and he became Minister of the Police in 1799. Fouche was tasked with hunting down the reformed Jacobin Club after it re-entered open politics, and he closed down the club's operations after going after its radical pamphleteers, editors, and governmental critics. He became one of the most powerful men in France, and he helped Napoleon Bonaparte with overthrowing the Directory in the Coup of 18 Brumaire. Fouche remained Minister of Police under the First French Empire, thwarting several conspiracies against Napoleon's rule. However, he fell out with the arrogant Napoleon in 1810 and was dismissed from his post, being sent to govern Croatia and being demoted to an advisory role. In 1815, he was briefly reinstated as Minister of Police under both Napoleon and Louis XVIII of France, and he was proscribed in 1816 for voting for Louis XVI of France's execution. He died in exile in Trieste, Austrian Empire in 1820.